cyberhobo
type: channel
description: There's always a place to go, and a way to get there...
date: 2025-01-02T02:46:13Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
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items: Un-heroic discoveries of 2024
items: 2024 US election reaction
items: 2023 Shares
items: 2022 Review
items: My Tho Eveningscape by Daniel Kreadman Kuhn
items: Daniel Kreadman Kuhn left us today
items: The publishing of the PaCT
items: 2021 Review
items: Notes on 2020
items: Plan to vote now

Un-heroic discoveries of 2024
type: item
creator: cyberhobo
date: 2025-01-02T02:46:10Z
subject: General
description: I thought I’d try to pluck one small thing from my past year to share. What came to mind is a little shift that happened in my taste for stories that might reflect a cultural shift. For most I’ve my life I’ve gravitated toward hero stories, which I recognized in my twenties when I read […]
encoded: I thought I’d try to pluck one small thing from my past year to share. What came to mind is a little shift that happened in my taste for stories that might reflect a cultural shift. For most I’ve my life I’ve gravitated toward hero stories, which I recognized in my twenties when I read Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces. This book formed the foundation of my understanding of story, one that I tended to apply to all stories in a “more is better” kind of way. This year I’ve noticed a tendency to gravitate away from grandiose hero stories and toward a kind of story where the hero’s journey is so small or de-emphasized that it becomes almost undetectable. As with so many developments in my life, Ann led me to this one. It started with fireplaces and trains, which came to us via the large television (our first) that we inherited from my dad. We were determined not to let the TV inject too much degrading mainstream slop into our lives. Ann applied herself to finding things to put on the TV that felt good. Almost as a joke she starting playing videos of fireplaces. The TV is mounted above our fake electric fireplace, which sits in front of the real fireplace we never use. Surprisingly these videos fit nicely into our lives and we found endless varieties on YouTube to choose from. I didn’t think of them as stories at first, perhaps because they didn’t fit my learned hero framework. But now I see them as very open, flexible stories that we can incorporate into our lives in much the same way as any story. At first, though, I just experienced them as a new and refreshing kind of TV. Next came trains. Ann has always been attracted to trains, so why not invite them onto the TV? Producers like Rail Cowgirl started to get almost as much screen time as fires, simply turning the TV into a train driver’s view. This expanded eventually to include minimalist train travel videos. These have a sort of protagonist, but we prefer the kind with no dialog or grand narrative oth…

2024 US election reaction
type: item
creator: cyberhobo
date: 2024-11-06T15:57:19Z
subject: General
description: We’ve knowingly consented to the use of disinformation to gain power. I’ve been bewildered by this since the 2016 election. Being a technologist by trade I pondered ways to use technology to counter disinformation, but my thinking has changed. I now believe we are vulnerable to disinformation because we are in pain, and the best […]
encoded: We’ve knowingly consented to the use of disinformation to gain power. I’ve been bewildered by this since the 2016 election. Being a technologist by trade I pondered ways to use technology to counter disinformation, but my thinking has changed. I now believe we are vulnerable to disinformation because we are in pain, and the best way to counter it is not with facts and evidence, but by first attempting to understand the pain behind it. As a nation we’ve been wounded and traumatized somehow, and I suspect technology has contributed to this. I hope I can better counter the disinformation we’ve embraced by recognizing the pain of those who carry it and trying to understand it. Maybe there are still ways tech can help us heal, but I think it has to start with compassion for one another, especially those we disagree with. If we can learn to help each other heal, I think we’ll slowly lose our taste for lies and propaganda. I’m still bewildered, but it’s a wilderness I can move in. I hope sharing it helps you keep moving too.

2023 Shares
type: item
creator: cyberhobo
date: 2024-01-01T20:24:29Z
subject: General
description: This year was stressful in ways that I’d rather not share. Rest assured the reasons are personal and mundane, and not life-threatening. At the risk of promoting an over-idealized internet version of my life, I thought I’d just share some nice things that stood out or helped me in 2023. These are for your enjoyment, […]
encoded: This year was stressful in ways that I’d rather not share. Rest assured the reasons are personal and mundane, and not life-threatening. At the risk of promoting an over-idealized internet version of my life, I thought I’d just share some nice things that stood out or helped me in 2023. These are for your enjoyment, but are not an attempt to represent what my life is like overall. Maybe I’ll put this disclaimer on every post from now on! Books come to mind first. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel A. Van Der Kolk had a huge impact on me. So many humans have experienced trauma that having little or no understanding of it creates a huge blind spot, especially with those humans you love. This book made me think a basic course in trauma should be a public education requirement. It can add a dimension of compassion to almost any human interaction, and for the really meaningful interactions it can be a game changer. Another big one was Breath by James Nestor. We breathe all day every day. Could more insight into that bodily function be a boon to our overall experience of life? It has been for me. I still share photos on Flickr and embrace the internet old fart identity this conveys. Of course our cat Maddy is the most photogenic member of the family. Attempted dirt bath on the Black Rock playa I’m very grateful my good health allowed me to continue an active life this year. Strava has become my most active social network. One highlight from the year was a week of splitboarding in the Utah Wasatch with my ski buddies Aaron and Orri. An important part of my outdoor life has been volunteering with Adventure Scientists. Ann and I managed to collect more cone surveys than any other team this year for their reforestation project. I learned a lot about how conifers reproduce, and also how difficult it is to get good photos of this subject. Since you’re now burning with curiosity, here is a nice crop of incense cedar cones, which look like green pistachios. What else? I continue t…

2022 Review
type: item
creator: cyberhobo
date: 2023-01-02T05:07:27Z
subject: General
subject: hobonews
description: It’s been a transformative year for me. I feel like a different person in many ways. There were a lot of challenges and I hope to share some of the things that helped me get through them. It was my last year with my father Daniel, much different from any other. At the end of […]
encoded: It’s been a transformative year for me. I feel like a different person in many ways. There were a lot of challenges and I hope to share some of the things that helped me get through them. It was my last year with my father Daniel, much different from any other. At the end of May I went to Phoenix where we packed up a rental trailer and moved Dad to a room in Park Place, an assisted living home near me in Reno. With over a dozen medications to manage, the mobility limitations of advanced Parkinson’s disease, and unpredictable bathroom needs, we were ready for a challenge. Over the Memorial Day weekend we made our way between busy restaurants and restrooms, keeping the meds on schedule and avoiding any serious mishaps. My appreciation for the work Jan, his caregiver in Phoenix, had been doing full time for six months grew with my own experience. Dad was understandably anxious about such a big change but always managed it with grace when it counted. We arrived on time in Reno where Ann had managed to make his small, mostly empty room feel welcoming with a cozily made bed and flowers on the window sill. The months that followed were some of the closest I’ve had with my dad, in a relationship reversed in many aspects from the one we’d developed as mostly independent adults. As he came to depend on me for more things my role became parental in some ways, something neither of us were accustomed to. Our deep trust in each other was tested regularly, but it held. One thing I recognize clearly looking back is that my dad had some resources in place that made his care possible. Without these, many of the challenges would have been impossible instead of just difficult. Reflecting the state of our health care system, the big ones involved insurance. As a former United States Postal Service employee his primary health insurance was Medicare (Hospital/Part A and Medical/Part B). That was the first line of defense and the easiest to manage because providers all have it dialed in. I…

My Tho Eveningscape by Daniel Kreadman Kuhn
type: item
creator: cyberhobo
date: 2022-11-11T15:23:04Z
subject: General
description: My father Daniel didn’t quite make it to veteran’s day this year. I’m remembering him today with this poem he wrote as an army officer in Vietnam. My Tho Eveningscape just a trace of a windmoving the damp felt air,this slight keenery of tactilityfeathers over me alone on the rooftopwatching the day whisper into deathwith […]
encoded: My father Daniel didn’t quite make it to veteran’s day this year. I’m remembering him today with this poem he wrote as an army officer in Vietnam. My Tho Eveningscape just a trace of a wind moving the damp felt air, this slight keenery of tactility feathers over me alone on the rooftop watching the day whisper into death with a cool moist sibilance. a grey cottony sky trowels its own monotony to the gleam of gold at the horizon; the town under random oblique placards of tin shiny and cold, lies respirating and gentle retiring sub specie aeternitatis like so many another of its kind. the rain left puddles strewn like mirror fragments on the ground the oil color texture of the earth and trees are deep with rich organic redolence breathing into the foundations of my senses. through the streets dogs snoop each heap of curious rubble, gutted windows and walls merge with corrugated half-patched housing clinging for structure onto wealthy unmarked homes. there are no vespers here. only the raw, gay dissonant cacophony of children’s cries and shouts rise like a dismembered symphony to hymn the halflight throng; the sentience of untempered voices fills the town indigent with laugh-now capers trilling down the distant cannon thunder. one young husband before a roofless home strums a guitar singing some half-formed song; nextdoor laundry slashes the air in drooping red and white and purple between a lean-to and one dead tree. lights begin to shine gently from open doorways into alleys cluttered with rusty cans and gnarled pierced roofing; broken lumber provokes a vague geometry over heaps of brick gathered out of rubble, earthenware jars stand along the walls to catch the rain people move among the shadows in the evening’s conversations with scant solace, scant response. a mother walks, nestling her infant in her arms, about the floor of a once commodious living room, no more now after the Tet shells fell; the guitar again stills the night with music softly as fleet birds dash…

Daniel Kreadman Kuhn left us today
type: item
creator: cyberhobo
date: 2022-11-06T21:37:13Z
subject: General
subject: hobonews
description: My father Daniel died peacefully this morning, Sunday November 6 2022. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2008, and survived prostate cancer in 2015. I would like to write more about his life, but today is about giving and receiving love from all who knew him. Thank you.
encoded: My father Daniel died peacefully this morning, Sunday November 6 2022. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2008, and survived prostate cancer in 2015. I would like to write more about his life, but today is about giving and receiving love from all who knew him. Thank you.

The publishing of the PaCT
type: item
creator: cyberhobo
date: 2022-02-15T04:40:59Z
subject: General
subject: Pacific Crest Trail Hike
description: At last, my lifelong friend and hiking partner Peter Miles Bergman is taking orders for his 263-page art-book and memoir chronicling the two halves of our Pacific Crest Trail hike and the 23 years in between. As a character in the story my opinion may be suspect, but I love this book and the companion […]
encoded: At last, my lifelong friend and hiking partner Peter Miles Bergman is taking orders for his 263-page art-book and memoir chronicling the two halves of our Pacific Crest Trail hike and the 23 years in between. As a character in the story my opinion may be suspect, but I love this book and the companion zine and photo-animated flip book. There is so much more to be discovered in these works than just an epic backpack trip and friendship. You can get more details and previews at pact.report.

2021 Review
type: item
creator: cyberhobo
date: 2022-01-02T04:10:06Z
subject: General
description: I won’t lie, my ideas about this year are mucky at best. Maybe that’s a succinct summary of sorts. Perhaps taking a little tour through the muck will demuckify it a little. My 2016 review outlined my practice of using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for perspective and reflection. Aside from a childish urge to change […]
encoded: I won’t lie, my ideas about this year are mucky at best. Maybe that’s a succinct summary of sorts. Perhaps taking a little tour through the muck will demuckify it a little. My 2016 review outlined my practice of using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for perspective and reflection. Androidmarsexpress, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Aside from a childish urge to change the pyramid into a volcano, my turn of thought this year could be pictured as an upside-down version of the triangle representing a hierarchy of values. At the bottom, your needs dictate your values with little room for choice. At the top, you might value almost anything. I’ve tried this year to value the search for what to value while feeling utterly bewildered. To be honest, reaching bewilderment was a victory. The starting point was closer to despair and depression. It’s hard to admit that publicly because, remaining fairly high on Maslow’s hierarchy, to complain feels disrespectful to so many who struggle below. But often I was there regardless, lost and listless, letting my life continue on autopilot with no idea where I’d steer it if I could. It was Yuval Noah Harari’s books that helped me get to bewilderment. I recommend starting with Sapiens, though it was 21 Lessons for the 21st Century that showed me the way from panic and despair to bewilderment. I remain there, but it feels justified and perhaps not endless. The connection of the year’s events to my feelings isn’t clear to me. Strangely, I don’t attribute it to the most obvious new force in my life: my growing role in my father’s care as he reaches the late stages of Parkinson’s disease. While full of challenges, this role is very fulfilling on the “belongingness and love” level. I feel as close to my dad as I ever have. We started the year with him in Phoenix where he and Sarah fought off COVID-19 while Ann and I did what little we could from the trailer in the yard that Sarah got for us. Iron…

Notes on 2020
type: item
creator: cyberhobo
date: 2021-01-03T22:31:15Z
subject: General
description: This has been a year to go down in the annals of blogs, wikis, and feeds for the ages. I’ve fared better than most I think, but my life has changed completely. I’m now sitting at a desk in a bedroom in Phoenix, feeling tired, uncertain, hopeful, determined, scared, cynical, stoic, weak, strong. How, broadly, […]
encoded: This has been a year to go down in the annals of blogs, wikis, and feeds for the ages. I’ve fared better than most I think, but my life has changed completely. I’m now sitting at a desk in a bedroom in Phoenix, feeling tired, uncertain, hopeful, determined, scared, cynical, stoic, weak, strong. How, broadly, did I get here? PaCT Draft I have to start with a bit of amazement at my luck in choosing 2019 to finish hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, fulfilling a 23-year pact with my friend Pete. If we had picked the wrecking-ball year of 2020, that dream would likely have been crushed beyond salvation. I began the year determined to write about the trip, which I started to do. Then I lost steam and got excited by Pete’s writing, which I helped to edit. The publication of his book is one thing I’m really looking forward to in 2021. Descending to Needle Rock The snow was slow to come early in the year, so we did some chilly hikes on the still bare dirt then road-tripped to Arizona where Ann was signed up as a volunteer for Saguaro census 2020. I went with her as far as Phoenix where we visited my dad and Sarah. We figured this might be our only Arizona trip for the year. Alkali spring campsite While Ann counted cactus some snow finally fell and I had a few good outings. Aaron scopes a route to Warren lake The weekend of March 14 I decided to start working from home due to COVID-19, and I asked Ann to come home from Arizona. From this point on, we worked from home and only met friends outdoors. Quarantine smiles Thus began the pandemic cycle: work, exercise, cook, sleep, repeat. April. May. The isolation seemed to be working. Daily new cases in Washoe county exceeded 50 a couple of times but then fell again afterward. We moved the cycle to Nampa, Idaho for a visit to Ann’s parents after we each isolated ourselves as much as possible for the two weeks prior. The world felt bigger and wilder when we traveled. The return trip involved a narrow escape from miles of muddy road in …

Plan to vote now
type: item
creator: cyberhobo
date: 2020-09-17T04:12:02Z
subject: General
description: I made my voting plan tonight. Well, actually Ann did, but I did some of the thinking part! We can’t help each other too much, or too soon, and the time to do it is now. Online Tools There are a plethora of websites out there purporting to help us through the voting process. I’m […]
encoded: I made my voting plan tonight. Well, actually Ann did, but I did some of the thinking part! We can’t help each other too much, or too soon, and the time to do it is now. Online Tools There are a plethora of websites out there purporting to help us through the voting process. I’m partial to the Outdoor State, my Mom to IWillVote.com, and there are countless others. But hold on. Making a plan to vote is hugely important, but so is our privacy. How do we know what these sites will do with our personal information? I’m sure most of them are earnest and honest, but there’s just no easy way to know, and I want to break the habit of typing my details into every website that catches my fancy. Ann did it a better way, which I endorse. Search and Verify The website you want is your county or state election official site. Search results can turn up fakes, hopefully rarely, but with a little discrimination you can get some quick assurances. Here’s my search: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="935" height="1024" src="https://www.cyberhobo.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Screen-Shot-2020-09-16-at-8.21.06-PM-935x1024.png" alt="" class="wp-image-14980" srcset="https://www.cyberhobo.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Screen-Shot-2020-09-16-at-8.21.06-PM-935x1024.png 935w, https://www.cyberhobo.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Screen-Shot-2020-09-16-at-8.21.06-PM-500x547.png 500w, https://www.cyberhobo.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Screen-Shot-2020-09-16-at-8.21.06-PM.png 1350w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 935px) 100vw, 935px" /> The top two results are indeed the site I’m looking for, but I also clicked around the next two websites for local media outlets that I recognize. They tend to link to the secretary of state voting site, but I found links to the county site too. There are a few important points here: I got some kind of outside validation that I found the real site I was looking for. There are two real sites that will both work: one for the state and one for the county. Use t…